Friday, October 29, 2010

eGov 2.0 Award 2010

 Abhay K. along with Navdeep Suri receiving eGov 2.0 2010 Award at the Claridges in New Delhi
Abhay K. along with the momento of eGov 2.0 award 2010

The story began on Thursday 8th July 2010 when Abhay K. opened a Twitter account for the Public Diplomacy Division  with the handle 'IndianDiplomacy' and put the first official tweet  -'Special Issue of India Pespectives on Tagore at http://www.scribd.com/doc/34044322/India-Perspectives-Special-Issue-on-Rabindranath-Tagore ' . The rest is history. Accounts on Facebook, Youtube, Blogspot, Scribd & Issuu followed which caught the imagination of the mainstream media. About 16 stories appeared in HT, ToI, Mail Today, Tehelka etc. on the social media initiatives of the Public Diplomacy Division. And finally the award came on Thursday 28th October 2010. It was a victory of team work, able leadership of Navdeep Suri who fought many battles to let Abhay K continue implementing his vision.

Monday, October 4, 2010

E-Release of 10 Questions of the Soul on Kindle

I think that these questions are based on ancient Indian philosophy. For me, they are a very interesting mixture of Plato, Voltaire, Vernadsky etc.

As a careful reader, I would like to make some comments on author's philosophical system. I am not quite sure that everybody craves for physical immortality. To my mind, people are simply afraid of death and the suffering connected with the process. If it were in some other way, there would be no Epicurean philosophy of death, but only Stoic.

From what I have read, SQ is an inborn stable quality of a person. I think that everybody can develop spiritually, so SQ can be flexible (improving). This would give a perspective to any person.

I also believe that a person is a combination of spiritual and material. When material dies, spiritual is liberated and goes on living. I do not see this as immortality, to my mind, our spiritual part is only lent for the period of our physical existence. It is just eternal, without the beginning or the end.

It was very interesting to read 10 questions after reading author's poems, because now I know that I have got the correct understanding of the philosophical foundation of author's poetry.

Prof. Irina Burova
Department of History of Foreign Literature
St. Petersburg State University